In medical diagnostic imaging, interpreters of examinations generate free-flowing text reports regarding the presence or absence of imaging findings on examinations which they interpret, and their determinations regarding the diagnostic significance of such findings. Great efforts are expended by individual study interpreters to produce reports which contain commonly recurring phrases, structures, and concepts. The mental labor and time involved in generating such reports is a major productivity-limiting factor.
To date, this problem has been addressed in a limited fashion through the use of pre-fabricated phrases and report templates. Pre-fabricated phrases are lists of commonly used expressions, which report authors can draw upon when generating a report, by inserting relevant phrases into the report text, stringing such pre-defined expressions together, and entering additional free-form text, to form a final report. Templates are prefabricated frameworks for complete reports regarding commonly encountered findings, with certain pieces of information left blank, which the report author fills in at the time of final report preparation.
Generating reports through the use of pre-defined expressions remains laborious as the mental work involved in choosing appropriate expressions, organizing the expressions, and in excluding or modifying incompatible expressions, for the report, remains entirely the task of the report author. In fact, a report author may have to devote additional time to ensure that prefabricated phrases which were inserted into the report do not include any features inconsistent with one another.
Another limitation of systems of pre-written phrases is that only commonly used phrases which would interest a “critical mass” of users of the pre-written phrase system are available to report authors. Such “copy-and-paste” pre-written expression systems do not adequately address the needs of users writing reports regarding unusual circumstances which may be encountered repeatedly, but with insufficient frequency to make it worth including suitable phrases into the standard “lexicon” of pre-set phrases. Placing too many such infrequently used phrases into the standard distributed set of phrases would cause the phrase set to be large, unwieldy, and difficult to navigate.
When templates are used, it is necessary for the report author to devote considerable effort to the task of modifying templates to fit the unique circumstances of the case being reported. A particular limitation of template-based systems used in existing report generation technologies is that such systems are highly structured and rigidly defined. Such systems consist of rigidly formed blocks of text with blank areas for the author to fill in by voice recognition, typing, or other means. This technology does not offer sufficient flexibility for use in reporting cases which deviate from a limited set of pre-determined patterns.
Accordingly, there is a need for report authors to employ a “smart” report generation method to generate reports in a more time-efficient manner. There is also a need to allow report authors to have a mechanism to reduce likelihood of errors or oversights in reporting.